All posts in category Mexico

A portion of the existing border fence between Mexico and the United States in California. / Rey Perezoso / Flickr / Creative Commons

More than two years after U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump first boasted that he would “build a great, great wall on our southern border and … make Mexico pay for that wall,” his main proposal to fund it appears to remain blocking transnational remittances – in contradiction of neoliberal capitalist principles he embraces. In a letter that now-President Trump sent last month to U.S. House and Senate Leaders he said the border wall was necessary to protect “our national security and public safety” because the “porous southern border … is exploited by drug traffickers and criminal cartels.” He was ambiguous, however, about who was going to pay for the wall, simply arguing that the country must “ensure funding for the southern border wall and associated infrastructure.” Trump offered to make a deal to protect the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program – the “Dreamers” – only if Congress passed harsh immigration policies and funded the wall.

Under pressure during the campaign to explain how he would make Mexico pay for the wall, Trump claimed he could hold remittances sent by Mexican immigrants to family members in Mexico hostage until Mexico agreed to pay. President Obama noted at the time that the implications of ending immigrant remittances would be “enormous,” difficult to implement, and likely push more people to leave Mexico for the United States. Senders would likely resort to informal channels, and Trump’s proposed selective taxation of money sent to Mexico would raise legal issues because of the discriminatory nature of such a program.

Trump has been quietly backing away from his repeated campaign promise to make Mexico pay. When Mexican President Peña Nieto told him in a phone call last January that “my position has been and will continue to be very firm saying that Mexico cannot pay for that wall,” Trump responded with much less bluster. He noted simply that “you cannot say that to the press. The press is going to go with that and I cannot live with that.” This acknowledgement that the issue was largely about political optics suggested that Trump knew that, in the memorable words of former Mexican President Vicente Fox, Mexico was “not going to pay for that f***ing wall.”

Trump has not withdrawn, however, his threat to block remittances. Such a policy would cause hardship for millions; most remittances are spent on basic necessities such as food. But by undermining the free flow of capital, a core feature of our modern globalized world, Trump is also attacking a central component of neoliberal capitalism. Trump also takes positions that reflect anti-globalization and protectionism – such as his characterization of NAFTA as the “the worst trade deal ever signed in the history of our country” and his claim that globalization “left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache” – but tying capital flows with labor flows would arguably turn the values of the global order on their head.

The notion that there is an imbalance in the treatment of workers and capital is ordinarily associated with the radical left. Harvard Law Professor Roberto Mangabeira Unger, for example, highlighted this imbalance in his 1998 book, Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative, in which he wrote, “The architects of the new world economic order have built a system in which capital and goods can roam the world while labor remains imprisoned in the nation-state or in blocs of relatively homogeneous nation-states.” For Trump and other Republicans, linking remittances and immigration would normally be anathema. If the U.S. Congress decides not to fund the wall, we may discover that taxing cash transfers may be an autocratic strategy that crosses ideological lines.

November 27, 2017

* Ezra Rosser is Professor of Law at the Washington College of Law, where he has taught Property, Federal Indian Law, Poverty Law, Land Use, and Housing Law.

Latin America’s reactions to the massive transnational scandals involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht and its subsidiary Braskem are an important sign of progress in anticorruption efforts. But across the region, courts’ reluctance to challenge elites remains a major obstacle to deeper accountability. Brazilian, Swiss, and U.S. authorities’ announcement in December 2016 of a multibillion dollar global corruption settlement with the Brazilian firms – valued at $3.5 to 4.5 billion – was remarkable for being the largest in history. It was also shocking for its revelations: Odebrecht admitted using a variety of elaborate subterfuges to launder bribe payments and corrupt proceeds, including by setting up a bribe department and buying an offshore bank. Graft allowed executives to rewrite laws in their own favor, and guaranteed that the right officials were in the right place when public contracts were up for bidding. The firms netted $3.60 for every $1 they spent on bribes in Brazil, and admitted to paying $788 million in bribes across twelve countries, including ten in Latin America.

The political salience of the charges is roughly similar in all ten Latin countries, muddying the reputations of presidents or former presidents in Argentina, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Panama, Venezuela and, of course, Brazil. Ministers and high-level officials have been implicated in the remaining countries: Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico. Nearly one year after the settlement, it is time to ask how well law enforcement and judicial processes are resolving the allegations against these high-powered public and private sector elites.

In a paper forthcoming in Daedalus, I argue that accountability can be thought of as the outcome of a basic equation – A = (T + O + S) * (E – D) – combining transparency (T), defined in its most essential sense as public access to information about the government’s work; oversight (O), meaning that government functions are susceptible to surveillance that gives public or private agents the right to intensively evaluate the government’s performance; and sanction (S), effectively punishing wrongdoing and establishing societal norms to their rightful place. These are tempered by institutional effectiveness (E) – understood as the outcome of state capacity, relevant laws and procedures, and citizen engagement – and political dominance (D), which diminishes the incentives for active oversight or energetic sanction. The graph above uses a combination of data points from the World Justice Project to measure each of the five variables.

The comparison yields mixed findings. On average, the nations implicated in the Odebrecht settlement do quite well on transparency, effectiveness, and political dominance – the outcome of a generation of democratic rule (with Venezuela being the obvious outlier). But all ten countries perform comparatively poorly when it comes to oversight, and abysmally when the criterion is sanction. This does not bode well for accountability, especially if we consider that among the Odebrecht Latin Ten, the highest-scoring country on the sanction criteria is Argentina, whose score is still below the middle-income country average. In Brazil, where trial courts have led the way in imposing sanctions on business elites, political leaders are nonetheless protected against meaningful sanctions by an arcane system of privileged standing in the high courts.

Latin American judicial systems – long rigged to protect local economic and political elites – remain the principal obstacle to accountability. The Odebrecht settlement signaled that a new day has arrived: new international norms and law enforcement across multiple jurisdictions are likely to continue to upset the cozy arrangements that have protected the region’s elites from corruption revelations for decades. But true accountability will only come when local courts and prosecutors are empowered to effectively punish corrupt elites. That implies changes in legal procedure, new laws, and most importantly, political will. Perhaps the Odebrecht case will galvanize domestic public opinion and mobilize policymakers about the need to improve local justice systems. The enormous costs of corruption revealed by the Odebrecht settlement suggest that change cannot come soon enough.

November 6, 2017

* Matthew Taylor is Associate Professor at the School of International Service at American University. His forthcoming article in Daedalus is entitled “Getting to Accountability: A Framework for Planning and Implementing Anticorruption Strategies.”

Revelations of Mexico’s use of state-of-the-art software to spy on domestic critics and OAS human rights experts have dealt another devastating blow to the credibility of President Enrique Peña Nieto and the Mexican government. Targeted in the cyberattacks were dozens of individuals and nongovernmental groups from various backgrounds, including leaders of the opposition PAN party investigating corruption allegations; anti-obesity activists lobbying for a tax on sweet carbonated soft drinks that the government opposed; and the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) sent by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to investigate the disappearance of the 43 students in Iguala in 2014.

The software – known as Pegasus and estimated to cost between $32 million and $80 million – sent the targets personalized text messages with links that, when pressed, led to the total compromise of their smart phones. The messages falsely alerted victims to family emergencies, for example, and said further information was available at a link in the text. Some purported to be from the U.S. Embassy, providing a link for updates on visa applications. The link downloaded spyware that allowed the perpetrators full access to all voice and data communications and allowed remote control over the microphone and camera on the affected device.

Confronted with evidence developed by University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab and corroborated by the New York Times, Peña Nieto admitted in late June that his government purchased Pegasus but denied that it was used to target opponents and investigators. He said that all of the government’s efforts have been “to maintain the internal security of the nation, fight organized crime, to generate security for all Mexicans.” The Israeli company NSO Group, producer of Pegasus, claims it sells the software only to governments and only for specific anti-terrorism, anti-crime purposes. The President threatened to investigate those who “have raised false accusations” – a statement his spokesman retracted several hours later – but he did acknowledge the need for an investigation. The office of the Attorney General (PGR), which was involved in the Pegasus program, was charged with looking into the matter, drawing cries of foul from critics.

Officials at the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights have called on Mexico to allow a full investigation by independent experts. For the same agency that bought Pegasus to investigate its use, they said, was not credible. An OAS official has stated publicly that the allegations “should be investigated.”

The internal spying scandal is yet another blow to the credibility of the Mexican government on human rights – whether the spying and harassment was approved by Peña Nieto or was the work of rogue agencies. The President’s credibility has been battered by scandals involving his family and administration, and corruption by state governors from his ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) has deepened perceptions of impunity at all levels. Violence is also creeping back to levels experienced during the term of Peña Nieto’s predecessor, Felipe Calderón. Among his most corrosive failures, however, has been the lack any progress investigating the brutal killing of the Iguala students. The government’s claims that it was unable to bring anyone to justice for Iguala – while spending tens of millions of dollars to spy on and harass international experts investigating the incident – has deepened popular cynicism about the President. Even if he accedes to an independent inquiry, the damage has been done, and he seems likely to limp, at best, toward general elections scheduled for mid-2018. InSight Crime (a CLALS-sponsored foundation) has also called the scandal “a massive self-inflicted wound in [Mexico’s] fight against organized crime” because it compromised anti-crime operations and undermined the government’s credibility.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s failure in his first 100 days to fulfill his most aggressive campaign promises affecting bilateral relations may have calmed nerves in Mexico, but the Peña Nieto Administration is moving ahead with efforts to mitigate the impact of thousands of returning immigrants. Trump apparently has given up on making Mexico pay for his proposed border wall, and the U.S. Congress doesn’t want to foot the bill either. He has also toned down his threats to pull out of NAFTA – “the worst trade deal ever” – and seems to be edging toward a more modest renegotiation. But one pledge the Administration seems eager to meet is ramping up deportations of undocumented immigrants from Mexico. Trump is not immediately deporting the millions of “bad hombres,” as he initially promised, but he is steadily deporting thousands, including many who do not have criminal records in the U.S. There are even stories of Trump supporters shocked at the deportation of law-abiding and tax-paying business owners. Moreover, while he assured Dreamers – youths brought to the United States as children – to “rest easy,” there are reports of U.S. immigration detaining some of these working and tax-paying youth.

The threat of mass deportations involving millions still looms large, and Trump’s unpredictability to settle on a course of action is increasing pressure on Mexican officials to act fast to mitigate the impact of the returning immigrants.

At its consulates in the United States, the government is actively helping those at risk of being deported, providing legal services to ensure due process in locales as far-ranging as Indianapolis and New Orleans. Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray continues to confidently declare that Mexico will fight for immigrants and stand up to U.S. immigration authorities. (He has also cast it as a human rights issue, spurring accusations of hypocrisy from critics concerned about Mexico’s treatment of Central American migrants.)

President Peña Nieto has enacted a reform to the General Law of Public Education facilitating Dreamers’ entry into Mexico’s education system, accrediting their U.S. education and helping those without proper Mexican documentation. Critics have called his public appearance with deportees opportunistic, a ploy to get much-needed positive media coverage, but the measures like those in education have real benefit for returnees.

Specific industries in Mexico are looking for specialized workers in the returning immigrants. The Mexican Association of Armored Vehicles (AMBA) estimated the availability of 50,000 thousand jobs for deportees in the areas of private security, armored car manufacturing, and transportation of valuables. As violent crimes have risen again in Mexico, this industry is in need of workers. Call centers are also actively recruiting. Their only requisite is fluency in English; no other experience is necessary.

Many Mexicans’ perception of Trump as unpredictable and erratic tempers any optimism about bilateral relations even though Foreign Minister Videgaray seems to have established a viable dialogue with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The return of the deported immigrants is an area in which the government is being given a second opportunity to show compassion for citizens. The migrants left Mexico for concrete reasons, however, and some are questioning whether Peña Nieto’s administration will be able to address them. Providing legal assistance to those at risk of deportation and facilitating education for Dreamers are important gestures, but they do not offer a viable long-term strategy. The bigger picture is still suddenly having millions of Mexicans back in the country with no job prospects. Trump’s delays on the border wall and mass deportations give the Mexican government time to come up with effective solutions, but such a massive disruption, especially coupled with the uncertainty over the future of NAFTA and the Mexican economy, is probably too much for any government to handle.

The Trump administration’s expansion of an already enlarged deportation apparatus and its attempt to establish a ban against immigrants from targeted countries has intensified the Sanctuary Movement and driven it to explore new ways of protecting undocumented migrants and other groups that are under attack. The new policies have generated a wave of protests and institutional responses from activists, lawyers, and immigrant-serving organizations as well as in higher education across the country. Just days after the November election, hundreds of thousands of students, faculty, and staff at over 190 schools, colleges, and universities supported petitions calling on their respective administrations to declare their campuses sanctuaries. The campaigns want schools to commit to withhold information from immigration enforcement authorities and disallow the presence of those authorities on campus without a court order or warrant, as well as establish institutional support to ensure that students with precarious migration status have access to the resources they need. At the same time, there are almost three hundred sanctuary cities, counties, and states, which are at the center of Trump’s promises to cut federal funding to any local or state government that adopts this stance of defiance. Republican Members of Congress in January introduced a bill (HR 483) to cut funding to universities that declare sanctuary.

The Sanctuary Movement has historical roots. In the 1980s, 400 religious congregations around the United States helped refugees from Central American wars enter the country. In addition to challenging discriminatory U.S. immigration practices, the movement condemned U.S. support for the governments prosecuting those wars. Years of effort led to legislation granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Central American refugees.

More recently, a New Sanctuary Movement emerged in 2007 in response to mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. It emphasized raising public awareness about the individual lives at stake and pressing for legislative reform. Today’s resistance is an outgrowth of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations’ raids, deporting almost 3 million individuals, and the massive immigrant detention system that they expanded.

Many cities, universities, and NGOs have backed away from the concept of sanctuary in response to Trump’s threats, arguing that the risk of losing federal funding or of putting themselves in the spotlight is too high, or that the sanctuary concept promises more than it can really offer. As Lewis and Clark College Professor Elliot Young has written, “Sanctuary is an aspiration, a statement of values rather than a statement of fact.” Indeed, one of the arguments against the proclamation of sanctuary by universities is the misunderstanding of the term: The undocumented community and its defenders have varied interpretations of what it means in practice, whereas the legal limitations on what can be done in the face of a court order are very clear. Yet, the ambiguity of the term leaves a space for creative interpretation and should be seen as an opportunity rather than a limitation.

Most universities, including my own, The New School, have issued a standard statement that they will not share information or cooperate with immigration authorities without a court order, but they have shied away from using the term sanctuary – even though the term is a significant form of resistance to unjust policies, a moral stance, and a message of solidarity to the larger university community.

Reviving the concept of sanctuary in this political context provides an opportunity to open a debate about the rights and protections that marginalized groups need, and how universities and other institutions that have joined the sanctuary movement in the last months (restaurants, art spaces, among others) can support and extend it. The time we are living in requires us to reexamine existing frameworks and concepts and mobilize them in effective ways when the principles and values we stand for are under attack. Declarations of sanctuary campus send a clear message of support to vulnerable individuals within the community. They also nurture transnational networks of solidarity – not just through churches, shelters, and civil society groups – but also including universities in Mexico, Central America, and other countries, to help individuals returning to their origin countries (deported or voluntarily) live better lives, including overcoming significant barriers to continuing their education. Migrants’ need and right to protection and education does not end when they cross the border, and universities’ ability to help them begins by taking a stance and making our campuses accessible, safe and open; in other words, making them sanctuary.

April 18, 2017

* Alexandra Délano Alonso is an Assistant Professor of Global Studies at The New School. She is the author of Mexico and Its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration since 1848 (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and co-editor of Borders and the Politics of Mourning (Social Research, 2016) with Benjamin Nienass. She is also a participant in the Robert A. Pastor North America Research Initiative.

In Mexico City, citizens mobilized against President Trump on his Inauguration Day with signs against U.S. imperialism (“Fuera Yankees”) and effigies of the U.S. President. / Adrián Martínez / Flickr / Creative Commons

The Mexican government hasn’t yet figured out how to react to U.S. President Donald Trump’s proposed policies toward Mexico, which have already eroded trust and potential cooperation, but one thing is clear: Mexican nationalism alone will not help. In terms of security cooperation, Trump has proposed a “great wall” and increased police and military presence to keep “bad hombres” outside U.S. territory without the consent or cooperation of his southern neighbor. The notion of shared responsibility, which shaped the Mérida Initiative and informed most cooperation under past administrations, has been virtually abandoned. Instead, Mexico has been presented to the U.S. public only as the source of security challenges – illegal migration, drugs, and common crime – and not part of the solution.

The Mexican government’s response has been, so far, equivocal at best. President Peña Nieto and his administration have proven incapable of articulating a coherent message towards Trump’s provocations. Responding to an erratic, Twitter-driven foreign policy poses challenges for any country accustomed to traditional diplomatic interaction, but Peña Nieto has an additional force to manage: surging nationalism from the left, center, and right. This revival includes disjointed appeals on social media for citizens to boycott “gringo” companies – notably Starbucks – and to consume “only national” products. Many campaigns express solidarity with the Mexican government as well as repudiation of Trump. The cover of Letras Libres, for example, carries an image that emulates Mexico’s national coat of arms – an eagle attacking a snake – but the snake being devoured by the Mexican eagle wears a blond Trump-style hairdo.

Nationalism, however, is not the answer. Beyond its potentially chauvinistic nature, it can too easily translate into a call for political loyalty and suppress necessary criticism of the current government. In moments of crisis, Mexican elites have long used anti-American sentiment to create consensus, overcome divisions, and even conceal a government’s lack of legitimacy – unhelpful in a moment that, like now, citizens need to hold their government accountable for its impunity, corruption, and human rights abuses.

Instead of making themselves feel good with nationalist slogans, Mexicans should assert their commitment to multilateralism and international cooperation, not only in trade (which at times seems to be the only issue on the agenda) but also on matters of security, human rights, and the rule of law. A critique of Trump’s militaristic understanding of immigration should include a critique of Mexico’s own failure to adopt a more integral migration policy south of its border – one protecting Central American migrants from the rampage of organized crime and capable of addressing the institutional and structural challenges behind the surge of Central American migration. Mexican citizens should call into question their government’s resort to militarized border control on the southern border, a strategy that in many ways mirrors the U.S.’ short-sighted and unilateral response to migration. By the same token, criticism of Trump’s reactive and militarized vision of security should also involve a close look at Mexico’s own militarized, short-term, and repressive response to insecurity and violence.

Some Mexican intellectuals have insinuated that an effective critique of Trump and his policies calls for a revival of national pride and honor. Letras Libres director Enrique Krauze, for example, tweeted that not attending protests to denounce Trump’s actions is a sign of “passivity, indifference, and even cowardice.” Yet if Mexico proves incapable of articulating a sound critique and resistance vis-à-vis Trump the real cause will not be a lack of nationalist ardor, but rather citizens’ incapacity to move beyond nationalism and uncritical support for their government. Mexico does not need nationalistic and “brave” citizens as much as it needs a citizenry committed to international cooperation, transparency, and critical engagement and that can call into question another government’s erroneous policies – like Trump’s – while demanding better of its own.

Members of Mexico’s Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación (CNTE) at a mass mobilization in 2013. / Eneas De Troya / Flickr / Creative Commons

Teachers in Oaxaca and other Mexican states are increasingly fearful and resentful of both their union and the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). Since the 1970s, Mexico’s Coordinadora Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación (CNTE) has operated as a formalized dissident caucus within the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Educación (SNTE), the national union that has been an essential part of state machinery since the 1940s and strongly aligned with the PRI. CNTE rallied for many causes, such as union democratization, regional autonomy, and economic justice, and enjoyed the most popular support in the 1980s. As they accumulated power in the 1990s in states like Oaxaca, CNTE leaders turned to neo-corporatist strategies to incentivize teachers’ participation in union mobilizations. An extensive point system, for example, rewarded teachers for going to marches, camping out during strike periods, and attending rallies in Mexico City; teachers who failed to participate in a minimum amount of activities lost union privileges and benefits. By 2005, Oaxaca’s union had split over its focus on politics rather than pedagogy. Over the last ten years, dissident teachers have increasingly faced government pressure and violence.

In 2006, military police broke up a rebellion led by striking teachers in Oaxaca state, in which dozens of activists were killed. In 2013, the massive teacher strike against President Peña Nieto’s constitutional reforms – which would require states to implement national education policies – ended with the violent eviction of teachers from Mexico City’s zócalo. In 2014, 43 student teachers in Guerrero state were massacred, and last year over a dozen protesters were killed in Nochixtlán, outside of Oaxaca’s capital city.

Although these incidents provide teachers’ unions considerable cause for continued mobilization, my research indicates that teachers in states like Oaxaca are less convinced that their ongoing struggles represent authentic political resistance. Many say they are fulfilling syndical obligations – less a reflection of personal convictions – because attendance is recorded and assures payment. Teachers tell me that they trust neither the government nor the union; they see government as an entrenched century-old political machine that has resurged with more impunity than ever, and the union – both nationally and regionally –as driven by special interests and cronyism. Maestros feel they have little recourse but to fend for themselves and families. They fear the violence that the government may visit upon them, but they also fear the public shaming they face if they criticize the union’s political tactics or support government reforms.

Education reform in Mexico is vital to improve the overall quality of teaching and learning – and to address the social and economic inequalities across the country. Government action is essential to such efforts, but endemic corruption has stained the public’s image of national and state leaders, cultivating distrust of top-down policies. The union is also essential to protecting teachers’ interests and challenging the hegemony of the national government, but its neo-corporatist strategies such as the point system delegitimize the activist banner waved by leaders in states like Oaxaca. Especially with increasing symbolic and physical violence, teachers are in an impossible position, stuck between two forces they don’t trust and facing dire consequences if they challenge the authority of either the government or union. Though dissident teachers are important to putting a check on government impunity and corruption, the union’s sustained mobilizations have negatively impacted their profession and student achievement. While “the teacher fighting is also teaching” – a common refrain in Mexico – teachers must also be free to step away from the march and into the classroom.

March 16, 2017

* Christian Bracho teaches in the International Training and Education Program at American University’s School of Education.

The immigrant deportation policy that the Trump Administration announced last week is among the most aggressive in U.S. history and promises to create tensions between Washington and Latin America and disrupt communities across the United States. Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly has told agencies under his aegis to “use all authorities to the greatest extent practicable” to remove undocumented immigrants from the country. President Trump called his new initiative a “military operation” – which an embarrassed Kelly denied during meetings in Mexico City intended to control damage from other Trump statements. The White House said the measures will “take the shackles off” the enforcers, and U.S. media reported enforcement officers’ celebratory comments that they “can finally do their job.” The Administration will also ask Congress to authorize a large expansion – another 15,000 – of enforcement positions.

The rationale repeatedly refers to deporting “criminals” – whom Trump calls “bad hombres” and “bad dudes” – but the new policy will exempt no classes or categories of “removal aliens,” including non-criminals. U.S. press already report roundups of individuals with no criminal records who are being expelled from the country within 72 hours. Fear among immigrants is pervasive, and there are many reports (such as here and here) of families hunkering down in their homes, withdrawing children from school, and setting up contingency plans for protecting U.S. citizen kids should their undocumented parents be grabbed by the authorities and sent abroad.

The policy weakens protections from “expedited removal” that the Obama Administration put in place, which allowed immigrants caught after they had been in the country for 14 days or more to be released pending proceedings to determine their eligibility to remain in the United States. (Details remain murky but supposedly will be announced soon.) Individuals facing expedited removal are not entitled to appear before a judge.

It increases efforts to press local police to help federal agencies find and deport undocumented immigrants, blurring the line between local and federal forces. Legal experts say this commingling of forces violates the Constitution, and many local police chiefs lament that it reduces the willingness of immigrant communities to help them fight crime.

It removes privacy protections for people who are not U.S. citizens or permanent residents, putting their personal information in the hands of vigilantes, blackmailers, and others who have no need to know it. Trump previously threatened to withhold federal assistance from “sanctuary cities” in the United States, which he accuses of causing “immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our republic” because they are reluctant to implement his deportation policies.

Two new measures suggest a long political campaign against undocumented immigrants. DHS will create an office – with the acronym VOICE – to collect information from victims of alleged crimes. It will be funded with “any and all resources that are currently used to advocate on behalf of illegal aliens” (most of whom have never committed a crime). The Administration will also “identify and quantify all sources of direct and indirect” assistance to Mexico, obviously to evaluate U.S. leverage against the Mexican Government if the Administration is not pleased with compliance with Washington’s wishes.

Deporting all 11 million undocumented immigrants estimated to be in the United States will be impossible, but the new measures will push unprecedented numbers of Mexicans and Central Americans back into societies that have no jobs and no security for them. That burden and the loss of immigrants’ remittances will cause those countries incalculable harm. The Administration’s rhetoric hammering on “criminal immigrants” is deceptive: DHS admitted in 2014 that most of the “criminals” it deported were guilty only of their undocumented presence (31.3 percent) and traffic violations (15 percent), and it would be foolish to expect that the Trump government will be more judicious. The insinuation that immigrants commit more crimes than do native-born citizens, moreover, has been debunked; they are incarcerated at a rate half that of native-born. These polices may enjoy the support of Trump’s political base, but the attacks on the defenseless; subversion of traditional values such as the right to legal counsel and the right to privacy; coercion of local police and civilian authorities; and the deportation of countless friends and neighbors whose everyday contributions enrich community life in the United States will have a profound impact extending far beyond its immediate victims.

Two maquiladoras in Tijuana, Mexico. The low percentage of Mexican value-added in Mexico’s exports is a key reason why the country has not gotten nearly as much employment growth as it hoped for when it joined NAFTA. / Anthony Albright / Flickr / Creative Commons

Officials in the Trump administration are proposing a new way of measuring the U.S.-Mexican trade deficit that, by making the deficit look larger than it currently appears, will likely be spun to support efforts to impose high tariffs or dismantle NAFTA. According to press reports, the President’s senior advisors, including the head of his new trade council, Peter Navarro, are proposing to include only “domestic exports” (exports of U.S.-produced goods) in calculating bilateral trade balances with Mexico and other countries. This would exclude “re-exports” – goods that are imported into the United States from other countries (such as Canada or China) and transshipped into Mexico – which are currently counted in total U.S. exports.

In spite of its political motivation, the proposed new accounting would render a more accurate measure of U.S. exports. In fact, it would make the U.S. deficit with Mexico look closer to what Mexico reports as its surplus with the U.S. For 2016, the U.S. reports a deficit of $63.2 billion with Mexico, while Mexico reports almost twice as big a surplus of $123.1 billion with the U.S. If the U.S. excluded re-exports, its trade deficit with Mexico for 2016 would be $115.4 billion, which is much closer to the Mexican number.

Nonetheless, this recalculation fails to correct for another bias, which makes the U.S. deficit with Mexico look artificially large. Imports are measured by the total value of the goods when they enter the country, from the immediate country of origin. But in today’s global supply chains only part of the value-added in imported goods comes from any one country. A television, for example, can be assembled in Mexico with components imported from Korea and other East Asian nations. As a result, the reported U.S. imports from Mexico (especially of manufactured goods) greatly exaggerate the Mexican content of those goods. Although data limitations do not permit an exact calculation of the Mexican content of U.S. imports from Mexico, it is likely relatively low. (My own estimates suggest it is on the order of about 30-40 percent for manufactured goods). Indeed, the low percentage of Mexican value-added in Mexico’s exports is a key reason why the country has not gotten nearly as much employment growth as it hoped for when it joined NAFTA.

The Trump Administration’s aggressive rhetoric and action on other issues related to Mexico, including immigration and the wall, suggest a political motivation for the proposal to adopt a new measure of exports, regardless of its merits. But the real problem is not the “correct” number for the U.S.-Mexican trade deficit; it is why NAFTA has not lived up to its promise of supporting high-value added exports and high-wage job creation in both countries. This promise was based on the idea that the United States would export capital and intermediate goods to Mexico for assembly into consumer goods, which would then be exported back to the United States. But especially since China joined the WTO in 2001, Mexico has increasingly become a platform for assembling mostly Asian inputs into goods for export to the United States (and secondarily Canada). Even if “re-exports” are excluded, Mexico remains the second largest export market for the United States (after Canada) – and U.S. exports to Mexico are 65 percent greater than U.S. exports to China. Focusing too much on measuring the U.S.-Mexico trade imbalance only distracts attention from the need to reform NAFTA so as to encourage more of the “links” in global supply chains to be produced in North America generally. If the Trump administration is serious about making the U.S. more competitive vis-à-vis China, it should think about viewing Mexico as a partner instead of as an enemy. In the larger context of Trump’s many objectionable policies on migration and in other areas, a long-overdue correction of U.S. export statistics is not worth getting upset over. The real issue is whether Trump’s trade policies – with Mexico and beyond – will bring the promised gains to U.S. workers, or will further enrich corporate billionaires and Wall Street tycoons.

President Donald Trump’s decision to put Mexican immigrants at the top of his enemies list has prompted Mexico to become more active – and more creative – in reaching out to compatriots in the United States to help them remain there or to cushion the shock of deportation. Largely because unauthorized Mexican immigration had been in decline for many years, it rarely made front-page news in Mexico, but since Trump’s rhetoric during last year’s campaign and since winning the presidency there has been no topic more popular in Mexico. The 5.8 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants living in the United States, according to Pew Research Center estimates, have their home country worried about the economic impact their deportation could cause. As Washington’s threat to deport millions looms ever larger, the Mexican government and other institutions are preparing for such a scenario. Their game plan includes both helping Mexicans fight deportation and easing their transition if deported.

Mexican consulates in the United States are actively offering legal advice to any migrant facing deportation. President Enrique Peña Nieto announced the country would send $50 million to hire lawyers and set up outreach programs. The consulates also set up a 24-hour hotline for immediate help and are actively sharing infographics on social media indicating how undocumented immigrants should react if they are detained.

Two weeks ago, President Peña Nieto personally received 135 deported Mexicans at Mexico City’s airport – the first time ever. Throughout the encounter he shared an upbeat and welcoming message. He described Mexico as a “land of opportunities” and said, “The doors are always open.” Dressed casually in a shirt without a tie, it was an image reminiscent of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s warm welcome of refugees.

Mexican political leaders have launched Operación Monarca, a multi-party movement to form alliances that benefit deported immigrants. A group of Mexican senators involved in the initiative participated in a forum last week in Phoenix, Arizona, entitled “Agenda Migrante,”at which dozens of undocumented immigrants shared anecdotes of their current situation, expressed their worries, and demanded Mexican officials and advocacy groups fight U.S. policy harder.

Universities in the country are also embracing the returning Mexicans. Universidad Iberoamericana, a private institution with various campuses around the country, offered 1,500 full-ride scholarships to incoming deported youths. The public Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, one of the country’s most prestigious institutions, also announced it’s starting to work with some U.S. colleges to assure that their students who are deported can continue their studies in Mexico.

Since Trump threatened to overhaul the tech-favored H1B visa work program, cities like Guadalajara have declared interest in becoming a technology hub. Mexicans hold a little more than one percent of the approximately 300,000 H1B visas (India has more than half), but the number of returning workers with technical qualifications could be significant.

President Trump’s border wall and its cost remain major irritants in the relationship, and there is great uncertainty over how the “renegotiation” of NAFTA will proceed, but Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray and President Peña Nieto continue to say Mexico is willing to cooperate with the United States wherever they can. They are hopeful to keep a strong relationship, while staying firm in their conviction that Mexico will not pay for the wall. Their shift on the undocumented in the United States reflects that commitment. No longer are unauthorized immigrants considered a long-term and one-sided issue in U.S.-Mexico relations, but rather an immediate and mutual problem. Mexico’s welcoming and warm message is probably small comfort to those being deported, and it is unclear if any of these actions could mitigate the economic and social impact for them, but the Peña Nieto government appears to be giving priority to avoiding a major train wreck with Trump over immigrants for now, and leaving the details for the future.